Labels: Slave Union
Review by: Tom Hughes
Points for this straight away for being a concept album about a load of murderous mutant bears emerging from the woods to slay and devour every last human on the planet. If they dress up as said bears to play we could even have another Send More Paramedics on our hands, and amen to that. But actually the music here is no joke, rather a really pretty fun and imaginative metally hardcore trickshot expo. Three guitars, three singers and a shitload of ideas, with a nice line in long, snakey, instinctive riffs that develop over a couple of bars rather than just a couple of downstrokes. One particular stop-everything ear catcher comes two songs in, swinging back and forth between a neck-snapping strut and a big, billowing melodic pay-off of the kind that’s really hard to work into super-heavy music convincingly. Precision rules here, but it never feels wilfully technical; they’ve got a nous for never making their epileptic-fingered instrumental contortions sound too alien or hard to grab hold of. Some great vocals help in this too “” plenty of blood-throated screaming for sure, but also some oddly wavering, twin-vocalled, hook-embracing relief. Fine stuff from a good little label with some other interesting-looking releases coming up.